


Coalescence

by Ginny_Potter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, space talk, very romantic stuff about the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 06:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20287213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_Potter/pseuds/Ginny_Potter
Summary: There are two spiral galaxies, destined to separate and find each other all over again for all eternity until Armageddon, somewhere in the universe.When Steve sees Bucky on the highway, he thinksThere are two galaxies, destined to separate and find each other–When Steve wakes up on the bank of the Potomac, he thinks–and separate again, only to find each other, I promise you, I will find you even if it takes millions of years, just wait for me.





	Coalescence

There was this story, Bruce told him once, back in 2012, right after defrosting, right before SHIELD.

They were in Stark Tower – Avengers Tower, whatever, it doesn’t exist anymore anyway – and it was night-time. They weren’t great sleepers, either of them, and often met in the half collapsed kitchen Tony was rebuilding in his spare time. Bruce used to smile his awkward smile and to push a hot cup of something sweet and ticklish that made Steve’s throat tingle. Ginger, lemon, two spoonsful of sugar. _Panacea_, Bruce liked to say, smacking his lips.

One night, a particularly terrible one – he dreamt of falling and falling and falling and ice in his throat suffocating him, and suffocating Bucky, Peggy, the Commandos, Howard, even Colonel Phillips– well, yeah, a bad one. That night, Steve walked on unsteady feet, longing for the solace of the soft sounds of the city and the smell of busted bricks and half-melted metal and he stepped into the exploded kitchen and Bruce was there, leaning towards a strange, chunky device on a tripod in the middle of the room, eye socket pressed against some sort of cylinder. Steve cleared his throat and Bruce jumped up, cracking some weak joke on startling the green guy and Steve asked _what’s that_ without really asking, just gesturing.

_A telescope_. Bruce said and then smiled his soft smile.

There was this story, Bruce told him once, back in 2012 and Steve has been thinking about it during the years.

With detached fascination in 2013, when he kept marveling about the new world, mourning the old one. With renewed hope and stupid romanticism in 2014, when the pieces of SHIELD drowned in the Potomac and the pieces of Steve seemed to go back to their place. With stubborn perseverance in 2015, every time Sam shook his head on a false lead. With foolish recklessness and hysterical folly in 2016, heart in his throat and weight on his soul. And so on and on and on until that day. Until today. Every day, for six years.

There was this story, Bruce told him once, back in 2012, leaning against a telescope Tony gifted him for whatever reason – maybe he had enough of stars, after seeing them up close.

It was a story about two galaxies with a silly name. They were called Mice Galaxies – because they have tails, you see? They were far away, in a constellation called Coma Berenices, the Mane of the Queen Berenices of Egypt, who had waited for her husband to come back from war and cut her beautiful golden hair when he did, and the gods placed it among the stars, forever remembering her devotion.

_But this was not the story I wanted to tell you, Steve. _

_It was pretty good anyway_. Steve said, thinking about Peggy Carter, waiting in a crowded, cheerful ballroom a man who would never come.

_No, you see, wait until you hear this other one, it’s about two galaxies, the Mice Galaxies, in the Coma Berenices, almost three hundred million light-years from us. They found out about them in 2002, when Hubble, the space telescope which orbits around Earth, snapped a picture of them, almost by mistake_. Bruce adjusted the telescope and moved his right hand in a wide gesture and Steve abandoned the bag of sugar he was holding – he had learnt to make the panacea drink, ginger, lemon, two spoonsful of sugar – and he walked to him, uncertain. Maybe he had enough of stars too, after seeing monsters coming from them – Jesus, he didn’t know a thing then. But he leaned in, pressed his eye socket against the cylinder and looked.

And it was beautiful. The galaxy on the right had a core with some dark marking and it was surrounded by a blue-white remnant of spiral arms, the tail started blue and terminated in a faint yellow. The other one, on the left, had a yellow core and two arks and bluish arms stretched out in a missed embrace.

There was this story, Bruce told him once, back in 2012, and it changed his life.

There are two spiral galaxies, the Mice Galaxies in the Coma Berenices, almost three hundred million light-years from us. That means that light, travelling three hundred thousand kilometers per second takes three hundred million years to arrive there. And vice versa. So, these two galaxies, you see them as they were three hundred million years ago, and three hundred million years ago they began a process of colliding and merging. They will collapse, are collapsing, already collapsed one into the other and then go their separate ways, connected only by the scattering pieces of the most peripheral parts of their spirals – it’s called tidal action, the relative difference between gravitational pulls on the near and far parts of each galaxy. When they will arrive as far from each other as allowed by their kinetic energy, though, they will succumb to their mutual attraction again, and collide, unable to resist fate. Separate to collide. Collide to separate. Until they coalesce and find a peace made of explosions and dying stars and black holes. It will take millions and millions of years.

There are two spiral galaxies, destined to separate and find each other all over again for all eternity until Armageddon, somewhere in the universe.

When Steve sees Bucky on the highway, he thinks _There are two galaxies, destined to separate and find each other_–

When Steve wakes up on the bank of the Potomac, he thinks_ –and separate again, only to find each other, I promise you, I will find you even if it takes millions of years, just wait for me_.

When Sam looks at him with worry and tells him there is nothing like home Steve thinks about long tails of stars which stretch and stretch unable to let go, forever intertwined in a galactic tide.

When Steve walks in Bucky’s apartment in Bucharest he thinks _It just took two years, but it felt like hundreds of millions of years_.

When Steve grabs the landing skid of the helicopter he thinks _I’m not ready to rely on the galactic tide yet another time. I am ready to tell him this story, he has always been a space geek, he has always been fixed on those sci-fi books, borrowing them, stealing them, reading them with a leg dangling from the fire escape stairwell._

When Steve looks at Bucky’s closed eyes in a cryochamber he wonders if that’s the breaking point of their galactic tide, their ultimate stretch, their galactical fingertips brushing without being able to hold on, like in Austria, like in Washington, like in Berlin.

When Bucky comes back to him, in his simple hut on the southern border of Wakanda, there are a thousand times in which Steve wants to tell him the story. _There are these two galaxies and **we** are collidi– they are colliding, please let this be the time in which we coalesce, I’m ready, I’ve done my wait, I want this._ But he is forced to let go every time, every time he slips into his dark suit, Bucky still sleeping in his cot, called away by duty, called away by a relative difference. And they separate and merge and separate and merge and Steve cannot bring himself to tell the story. Not yet, next time, not yet, next time.

There was this story, Bruce told him once, back in 2012, when he didn’t know he needed it and now he needs it more than anything because he is kneeling in Bucky’s ashes, he is touching the atoms of which he was made of and he can only think _I waited too long_.

_Bruce, do you remember the galaxies, the two spiral galaxies, in the Coma Berenices, you told me they were destined to coalesce, to forever merge in dust and explosions and peace. Why did you lie to me?_

There is this story, Bruce told him once, back in 2012 and Steve is _seeing_ it now, back pressed against the seat in a real spaceship, a talking racoon in the pilot seat, and he’s seeing the story, he’s seeing the stars and the galaxies and the universe and everything goes through his eyes, an explosion of blues and yellows and reds and_ Bucky, they are still here, we are still here, the two galaxies, destined to collide, I promise you, this is just the moment in which we are so far from each another I cannot feel your fingertips anymore, our gravitational tide, but it’s there, it must be there. Let it be there_.

_I’ll tell you this story,_ he thinks. _As soon as I see you again, as soon as I fix this, I’ll tell you this story and we will collapse into each other for the last time. We will coalesce and become one galaxy, in a peace made of explosions and light and dying stars._ He is ready to burn down every single star in the universe, to throw them all inside the black hole at the center of everything, all of them, just to tell this story.

And he does.

He burns down time and space. He travels through worlds and universes and what ifs.

And he comes back. They come back.

They come back to each other on a battlefield, because of course they do, on the burning ground of a planet, which revolves around a star, which is part of a galaxy that one day will end up like those other galaxies so far away. So, no more waiting. No more hesitating. Time is relative, in the end.

“There are two galaxies, in the Coma Berenices constellation, almost three hundred million light-years from us, who kept separating and colliding for millions of years. They are called the Mice Galaxies, isn’t that a silly name?”

The battle infuriates but Bucky cups Steve’s jaw and his thumb brushes the tears on his cheekbone and if he’s confused by Steve’s blabbering, he doesn’t show.

_There is this story, Bruce told me–_

And it’s been five years and it’s been a billion years.

And, in the end, they coalesce.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
So here's the thing. I'm an ignorant astronomy enthusiast.  
Yesterday I was at the observatory and they told me the story of the Mice Galaxies and it was so so so romantic. And my friend kept poking me whispering "THIS IS STEVE AND BUCKY" quite aggressively, so Marta, this is for you.  
I took most info from Wikipedia and from the NASA website but I twisted a bit the words for the sake of the poetic/cheesy take so please do not think this is scientifically accurate. Oh, and you cannot see the Mice Galaxies from a normal telescope, but it is Tony's telescope and Tony can do anything, so.  
Also, it is a sort of fix it for Endgame.  
Also, there is an actual scene from Endgame, so maybe the tag about compliance is not totally accurate.  
Whatevs.  
BTW, English is not my first language so tell me if I messed up somewhere. I'm sure I did.  
Thank you for reading!


End file.
